JOHN DOE #5 IDENTIFIED: BUT CAN WE GET THE FBI TO ARREST HIM?
PART FIVE
by Mike Vanderboegh, 1ACR
MIKEY BRESCIA (JD#2) HANGS WITH THE HOMEBOY BANKROBBERS, AKA THE "ARYAN
REPUBLICAN ARMY".
Michael Brescia played in a band, Philadelphia sources tell us. Also in
the band was Scott Stedeford. Brescia is not named in the Phildelphia
Inquirer story below, but is referred to as "the mystery man." Just why
Brescia was not named in this story is a little unclear, but sources at
the paper confirm that the "Mystery man" is Michael Brescia. There are
other Phildelphia links to the Oklahoma City conspiracy, but for now let
us ask another question:
"WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MONEY FROM THE ROBBERIES?"
Does Robert Millar know?
Does Kirk Lyons know?
Does Andy Strassmeir know?
Does Louis Beam know?
Does Dennis Mahon know?
Does Tom Metzger know?
Does Mark Thomas know?
Does Richard Butler know?
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, 30 JUNE 1996, Page 1
FBI: HEIST TRAIL LED TO WHITE SUPREMACISTS
Robberies hit 7 states, but their aim may have been bigger. A confession
led authorities to Philadelphia.
By Mark Fazlollah, Michael Matza, Maureen Graham and Larry King,
Inquirer Staff Writers.
The young man in jeans walked onto the used-car lot in Des Moines,
pointed at the white 1979 Buick LeSabre, and bought it for $750 cash.
"He didn't test drive it, didn't even start it up," remembers Jay
Helton, manager of Mr. Lee's Auto-land. "He asked me if the thing ran,
and I said: "It's a good ol' car."
Something about the buyer made Helton queasy. So he photocopied the
man's Alabama driver's license that balmy March afternoon in 1995.
Helton still had the copy a year later, when the FBI agents came.
The Iowa car dealer's instincts were right. The man wasn't from Alabama.
He was from Ardmore, Pennsylvania -- Haverford High, Class of '86. The
FBI said he and his friend, a Bustleton teenager, had fallen in with two
older men from the Midwest and joined in a bank-robbery spree fueled by
the antigovernment gospel of white power. Between Thanksgiving, 1992 and
last Christmas, the ring hit 22 banks in seven states.
Federal court documents portray a strange, latter-day James Gang, that
roamed the Midwest in harrowing style -- and may have been bankrolling
the nation's white supremacist fringe. The robbers took at least a
quarter of a million dollars -- none of which has been recovered. They
left unexploded bombs behind in banks and getaway cars. They spoke to
one another in gibberish. They wore hard hats, Bill Clinton masks, even
Santa Claus hats.
They tweaked their pursuers with mocking cartoons and letters to
newspapers. They lived in motels and rode in used cars, such as the
LeSabre, sometimes purchased in the names of retired FBI agents. They
packed automatic weapons -- and Aryan Nations literature.
The trail of the suspects lives stretches from eastern Oklahoma, where a
man called "Grandpa" heads an armed Christian sect, to an Upper darby
music studio, a Camden rowhouse, and the Wildwood boardwalk, where
teenagers with shaved skulls wear black and camouflage.
Scott Anthony Stedeford, 27, engineer's son, commercial artist, rock
musician, Haverford High grad, is one of four men charged. So is his
former roommate, an orphaned Bustleton teen named Kevin McCarthy. He
turned 19 last week. Both said they were not guilty.
At a hearing last month in Des Moines, a federal prosecutor said the
gang called itself the Aryan Republican Army, espoused the overthrow of
the government, and planned to use the bank-booty to finance
white-supremacist groups. One suspect, Richard Lee Guthrie, Jr., 38, has
confessed. He said the gang gave money to unnamed far-right causes.
FBI agents in Cincinnati arrested Guthrie in January after a car chase.
Two days later, Peter K. Langan, 37, was nabbed after a shootout with
the FBI in Columbus, Ohio. In the murky world of white supremacist
groups, the accused men have crossed paths with some notorious people.
McCarthy stayed for a time in the same Oklahoma compound that has been
mentioned in the Oklahoma City bombing investigation. Guthrie told the
FBI that he met Stedeford through a Berks County right-wing leader named
Mark Thomas.
Thomas, 44, who faces no criminal charges, has been to the Idaho
right-wing compound once frequented by Randy Weaver, the key figure in
the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff. Stedeford and McCarthy had no criminal
record. The two older defendants in the bank robberies had previous
felony convictions.
Langan, born in the Mariana Islands, is the son of a CIA employee who
ran away from home at 16. guthrie tried to join the elite Navy Seals
underwater squad -- but left after being courtmartialed in 1983. In
court documents, federal investigators said a search of the robbers'
"safe house" in Columbus yielded pipe bombs, guns, bullets, extremist
literature, FBI hats, fake IDs, and bomb-making tools.
FBI agents found similar items in a storage locker the group had rented
in Shawnee, Kan. Included was a copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf. Guthrie's
confession -- and a trail of documents, including the bogus Alabama
driver's license-- led investigators to Philadelphia. On May 22, FBI
agents arrested Stedeford at Sound Under, the Upper darby recording
studio where he had worked as a guitarist.
Two days later -- as McCarthy was being arrested in the Bustleton
section of Philadelphia -- federal agents searched a Camden apartment
where Stedeford had lived since December. There, they confiscated more
of the same: a Ruger handgun, a shotgun, automatic-rifle ammunition, a
police scanner, false Social Security cards, blank birth and death
certificates, supremacist literature, a walkie talkie, T-shirts with law
enforcement insignia -- and a stack of CDs recorded by Stedeford's band,
Cyanide.
Any link between Stedeford and hate-inspired bank robberies baffles his
old friends in Delaware County. "He was just the guy next door, a nice
guy," said Haverford classmate Timothy Walsh, who had known Stedeford
since kindergarten days at St. Denis' Parish. "I've never heard him get
in an argument or a fight. I never heard him use any racial slurs." But
friends also have described Stedeford as easily led and quick to embrace
new friends and ideas.
Guthrie has told authorities that he was introduced to Stedeford by
Thomas, the middle-aged white supremacist who lives in a ramshackle
farmhouse in Berks County and spreads his beliefs on the Internet. Young
people "talk about him (Thomas) as someone they would follow," said Ann
Van Dyke, on official with the State Human Relations Commission who
monitors hate group activity across Pennsylvania. "He has become a
father figure to many of them."
Thomas also has ties to Elohim City, the compound in Oklahoma. In an
interview last week, Elohim City founder Robert G. Millar said Thomas
sent Kevin McCarthy to study there. Elohim City -- described by Millar
as a spiritual place where every family "has a weapon...and most of them
are crack shots" -- has been in the news before. Timothy McVeigh, the
accused Oklahoma City bomber, placed a call to Elohim City before last
year's explosion, federal investigators said.
Then there is the mystery man. Investigators still want to talk to one
more Philadelphia man, a law enforcement official said last week. He
declined to say why. The man, in his 20s, is acquainted with Stedeford
and Mccarthy. In Camden, Stedeford's friend asked her about the same
man. And in Oklahoma, Millar said the same young man had lived at Elohim
City for about two years.
Experts say hate groups often reach out to the young. "They have
methodically looked for young people to draw into the movement," said
one expert who has advised government agencies. "They cannot be
underestimated." Floyd Cochran, an upstate Pennsylvania man who left the
white power movement and now lectures on its dangers, describes the
phenomenon this way: "You take a 15-,16-year-old, a young kid, and pump
into their head that if you rob a bank, burn a church, you assault the
enemy, that you are a warrior of God, a hero of your race."
Scott Stedeford's roots lie in a largely Italian-American neighborhood
of modest, gray-stone-and-brick twins in Ardmore. His father, a retired
quality control engineer, and mother, who stayed home to rear four
children, still live there. Acquaintances describe them as kind and
generous. As a teen, Stedeford immersed himself in drawing and music,
friends said. He played drums in a rock band, took commercial art
classes, and delighted in airbrushing images of his favorite band, Van
Halen, on friend's jackets.
After graduation he let his hair grow long and worked as a silk-screen
artist for a Bromall firm, where, coworkers said, he played acoustic
guitar for them on his lunch breaks. He also led a band called Cyanide,
which played loud, "speed-metal" music. A friend and former coworker
recalled Stedeford as a soft-spoken, impressionable "follower" who
plunged headlong into new friendships and interests. "I've seen him meet
people, become their friends, and then take on the way they talk and
behave," said the friend Pat Clinton. "It seemed like he was looking for
something to latch on to, something to belong to."
By the early 1990s, Stedeford had latched onto the trappings of the
skinhead world. Clinton described running into his old friend in early
1994 at the Cellblock, a Bensalem club. Stedeford was passing out
leaflets from a white supremacist group, he said. "He cam up and said,
'Yo,' and I didn't even recognize him," Clinton recalled. "He had his
head shaved, with the combat boots and flight jacket and camouflage
pants. I said, 'What? Are you into this stuff?' He said, 'I think you'd
really like it. You ought to check it out.'" Clinton said Stedeford
introduced him to a friend who was similarly attired. His name: Kevin
McCarthy.
He was smart but unruly, disruptive yet likable, resourceful but easily
led. To many who knew him, Kevin Mccarthy was potential unfulfilled. "To
tell you the truth, I enjoyed Kevin. I got along with him very well,"
said Arthur N. Romanelli, the principal at Greenberg Elementary School
in the Northeast, where McCarthy attended eighth grade. On the other
hand, Romanelli said, "he was a disruptive kid. He settled down for a
while, but anytime we had a substitute teacher, it was kind of a free
day for him."
Unlike Stedeford, McCarthy seemed to have discipline problems throughout
his youth. His mother died when he was small. His father, who was seldom
around, died later. For most of his life, McCarthy lived with his
grandmother. "He's a very ambitious boy," said his grandmother, who
asked not to be named. "That's why it's so heartbreaking for something
like this to come up."
When McCarthy was on the cusp of adolescence, his grandmother and her
husband moved to the Jersey shore. It was there, against a Wildwood
backdrop of Ferris wheels and taffy shops, that he began associating
with skinheads, said sean McCoy, who met McCarthy when the boy was 12 or
13. "He started hanging out with these guys he met up on the boardwalk,
and it seemed like he got into all this radical stuff," McCoy said. "Any
time I'd see him around, he'd be dressed in these weird clothes and Army
boots."
At the time, McCarthy's grandmother was married to Edward J. O'Neill.
According to his son, Tim O'Neill of Philadelphia, the stepfather tried
in vain to rein in the boy before the couple divorced a few years ago.
In the early 1990s, the grandmother returned to Philadelphia. Around
that time, McCarthy became acquainted with Mark Thomas and lived for
several months on Thomas' Berks County property.
In an interview Friday, Thomas initially said he could not talk about
Mccarthy because he was the young man's minister, requiring
confidentiality. "I love him," Thomas said, tears welling up in his
eyes. "I mention his name every night in prayers." Thomas said he could
not remember how McCarthy came to live with him.
According to the grandmother, it was Thomas who helped the boy gain
entry to what she described as a Christian academy in Oklahoma. Thomas
denied this. He said he "tried for more than a year" to enroll McCarthy
in a local high school, only to be rebuffed by local officials. But he
insisted he had no role in sending the youth to Elohim City. "I don't
know how he got there," Thomas said. "He went on his own initiative."
Whatever the impetus, the move was disastrous for McCarthy, Tim O'Neill
said. "I think that was the downfall of everything," O'Neill said.
In the rolling, wooded hills near the Oklahoma-Arkansas border, between
hardwood forests and fields speckled with bales of hay, small churches
dot the landscape. But Elohim City, the 1000-acre Christian Identity
compound founded 24 years ago by itinerant pastor Robert Millar, is a
place apart -- eight miles from the nearest paved road. "We came here to
be able to control the environment," explained Millar, 70, who leads a
community of about 100 adherents who live in a cluster of 10 to 20
mobile homes and rough-hewn buildings.
The Canadian-born Millar, a small, white-haired man known to his
followers as "Grandpa," sat Friday inside a chapel built of stone, wood
and hardened foam. Three flags -- the American, the Confederate, and the
banner of the Church of Jesus Christ -- sprouted from poles above the
entry. He said that he remembered Kevin McCarthy fondly and that Mark
Thomas arranged McCarthy's stay of several months at Elohim City. But
Millar said their was no link between his community and the bank
robberies. "If what they allege is true, I wonder who on earth could
have influenced a nice boy like that to get involved in such things, he
said of McCarthy. He was a nice, quiet, cooperative, intelligent person.
Law enforcement will have our complete cooperation."
(THERE WILL BE A SHORT INTERMISSION IN TRANSCRIPTION WHILE I GO CLEAN
UP. I LAUGHED SO HARD AT THAT LAST PARAGRAPH, I LOST ALL BLADDER
CONTROL. -- Mike Vanderboegh)
(COMING UP NEXT: MARK THOMAS TAKES LESSON FROM HILLARY CLINTON -- "I
CAN'T REMEMBER...I CAN'T RECALL")
Philadelphia Inquirer story resumes:
Millar said Thomas had sent another Philadelphia man to Elohim City, too
-- a man Millar remembered only as "Scott." He said Scott stayed at the
compound a couple of weeks.
As for Elohim City's beliefs: "We are opposed to governmental misuse of
tax money," Millar said. "We are opposed to SOME of the actions of
government. We're not ANTI-government ... Our people are all
self-employed, and we all pay taxes." The men and women of Elohim mostly
do construction-type work. They live together, but not communally. Each
man is responsible for his family and for putting groceries on the
table, Millar said. They grow vegetables and hunt deer for meat.
Children are home-schooled. We ARE racist," Millar said, "but we aren't
anti-semitic. I think it's better for races and cultures ... to have
relationships within their own ethnic group. That doesn't mean
isolationism, but it means separatism."
Millar said he had known Mark Thomas for about eight years and couldn't
be sure how many people Thomas had sent him over that time. "Now, with
Kevin, (Thomas) particularly thought we might be able to help him --
with education," Millar said. "A teenager looking for help is pretty
hard to turn down... we don't advertise. We don't seek recruits."
Millar acknowledged being questioned recently by the FBI but said he
doubted that the government suspected him of having any influence over
the bank robberies. "To the best of my knowledge, I don't think the
government agencies are considering that approach."
Mark Thomas' Berks County place near Allentown looks more like a
junkyard than a compound. Thomas would not say on Friday whether the FBI
had questioned him.
The self-proclaimed Christian Identity preacher operates a major
regional outlet for right-wing propaganda from his trash-strewn Berks
County farm. He lives with his 21 year old wife, Wendy, and their
year-old daughter on the farm, where for years he held skin-head and
neo-Nazi rallies, sponsoring the Hitler Youth Festival in April, 1994
and White Pride Day last October. The farm, which sits adjacent to a
closed toxic-waste dump, was once a scrap yard. Dozens of rusting car,
bus and trailer shells dot the woods behind the house. When Thomas holds
rallies, he hangs a Nazi flag out front as a marker for visitors. There
have been no recent rallies. An outbuilding is home to goats, which,
Thomas said, provide milk for his daughter.
In an interview Friday, Thomas, who wore an Aryan Nation belt buckle,
said he had been under a lot of stress because of news reports about the
bank robberies. He speaks guardedly of McCarthy, saying he had seen him
recently in prison but only in Thomas' capacity as a minister. And,
contrary to what Millar and McCarthy's grandmother have said, he
insisted that he had sent only one person -- his teenage son -- to
Elohim City.
Thomas also said he remembered Scott Stedeford only vaguely. He said
Stedeford had never attended rallies at his farm, nor stayed there. And
Thomas said he could not recall introducing Stedeford to Guthrie, as
Guthrie as told the FBI. "I introduce hundreds of people," Thomas said.
Any introduction would have been "only social, not to engage in any
criminal activity ... I don't engage in any criminal activity." He added
that all information Guthrie has given the FBI "comes from a polluted
source" -- a confessed bank robber.
Even Thomas' recollection of his relationship with "Grandpa" Millar was
clouded. He said they met in 1990 at the Aryan Nation compound in Idaho.
He said that he had only stopped in Elohim City while passing through
Oklahoma, and never for more than a day. Millar visited his home, Thomas
said, sometime after 1990, but he could be more specific.
When he spoke with reporters last week, Thomas portrayed himself as a
moderate, and made a point of praising a Jewish reporter's work. "I
don't hate anybody because of the color of their skin," he said. Floyd
Cochran, the former white supremacist who has renounced his old views,
said he had talked on the phone several times this month with Thomas,
who he met in 1990 when both were living in the Aryan Nation compound in
Idaho.
Cochran, now of Coudersport, Pennsylvania, said thomas was "boo-hooing,
saying maybe he should make a change in life, maybe he should quit being
racist." In a recent edition of his Internet publication, The Watchman--
subtitled The Voice of the Christian Posse Comitatus in Pennsylvania,"
Thomas wrote: "While place the preservation of the White race above all
other consideration, I do not desire to follow the party line of
mindless racism...." ..........
(NOTE: ANDY STRASSMEIR, CALL YOUR OFFICE! LOOKS LIKE WE'VE GOT A
POTENTIAL TURNCOAT HERE! WHY DON'T YOU PLACE ANOTHER CALL TO BOBBY
NORTON, ARYAN NATION'S ENFORCER AND SYNAGOGUE BOMBER IN MURPHREESBORO,
TN LIKE YOU DID TWO WEEKS AGO? SOUNDS LIKE THOMAS DOESN'T WANT TO SLEEP
WITH THE FISHES LIKE THE POOR MUELLERS IN ARKANSAS. WHY NOT CALL KIRK UP
AT LOUIS BEAM'S IDAHO HIDEOUT? OR BETTER YET, CALL PETRUSKIE IN
MANASSAS. HE DEALS IN MERCENARIES, MAYBE HE CAN HELP YOU OUT. WALT
BLANTON, EX-CIA BUDDY OF PETRUSKIE, HAS BEEN IN COSTA RICA FOR MORE THAN
A MONTH NOW, OR YOU COULD GET "PETRIE 4" TO GIVE HIM A JINGLE. BLANTON'S
MADE MORE THAN A FEW "PROBLEMS" LIKE THIS GO AWAY. BLANTON SHOULD TAKE
CARE THOUGH, SOME BIGGER SHARKS ARE STALKING HIM, AND SOME LITTLE ONES,
TOO. WHAT A CHOICE, TO GO IN ONE BIG BITE OR A DOZEN LITTLE ONES. POOR
BLANTON. POOR ANDY. TIME TO MAKE A FEDERAL DEAL WITH THE "GOOD GUYS",
MAYBE? OR, BETTER YET, TURN YOURSELF IN TO OKLAHOMA AUTHORITIES. THEY'RE
NOT PART OF THE COVERUP. -- Mike Vanderboegh)
..............................................................................
Philadelphia Inquirer continues:
(When Langan was confronted) by the FBI in Columbus in January, he
opened fire on them. The agents returned fire, wounding him slightly and
arrested him. Later, when Guthrie confessed, he told the FBI of the
young men he knew only as Scott and Kevin. He said that they were from
Philadelphia -- and that he had been introduced to Scott by Mark Thomas.
The FBI obtained the copy of the Alabama license that car dealer Helton
made back in Des Moines last year. They showed it to Guthrie, who said
the photo was of the man he knew only as Scott.
It's not clear exactly how the authorities tracked down Stedeford. Sara
Palilonis, who in December began subletting a room to Stedeford in her
Camden home, said the FBI told her the agency had tailed him and his
friends for 90 days. Palilonis added that she'd known Stedeford for
years. She said he was a kind man who helped take care of her when she
was eight moths pregnant. The FBI searched her rowhouse for nine hours
last month. "I stood outside and cried," Palilonis said.
The day before he was arrested, Scott Stedeford sat, plucking his
acoustic guitar in the lunchroom of the Brommall print shop where he had
worked for seven years after graduating from Haverford High. He
surrendered quietly the next day at Sound Under, the studio where he had
worked in Upper Darby. Authorities say he was carrying a semiautomatic
pistol.
When the robbery spree ended, big questions remained unanswered,
questions like: Where's the money? In a phone interview from jail in
April, Guthrie told the Chicago Tribune that he and Langan had given
money to groups he refused to identify. "We really didn't give all that
much," Guthrie said, "but we didn't really have a chance to get started.
It wasn't until the latter part of last year that we started to grow."
Authorities are not saying whether they know where some, or all, of the
$250,000 wound up or whether more arrests are possible. Last week,
though, one senior law enforcement official said: "Stay tuned on the
bank robberies."
COMING UP NEXT IN "JOHN DOE #2 IDENTIFIED, BUT CAN WE GET THE FBI TO
ARREST HIM?"----
AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD NAMES MICHAEL BRESCIA AS JOHN DOE #2
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